Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 14th, 2008

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Did I hear the honourable member say that the opposition had delayed the work of this committee? He must be in another world, or I misheard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

You may have misheard, but I'll leave that to the member to clarify, please.

Is there another on the same point?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Chair, the suggestion that the member is in another world implies that he's not present in the committee, and that's out of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Okay.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I think you should yellow-card him on that.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Order, please.

Nothing needs to be said about any of that. Thank you.

Clarify the point for Monsieur Proulx, please, and then carry on.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

We have two yellow cards on the table.

And to clarify the point, actually he should repeat it so I get it exactly. What was your point of clarification, through the chair?

Chair, what was his point of clarification?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Monsieur Proulx.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I'm very happy, by the way, Mr. Chair, that you have assistance on the government side of the table to help you in your decisions, but my question of clarification was whether I heard the honourable member say that the opposition was delaying the work of this committee.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Oh yes, that's right. Thank you.

To address that, what I'm saying is that the opposition has delayed the study of Bill C-6 and other important legislation. In fact, just to give some weight to what I'm saying, when I look at the outstanding business of the committee, there was a first report of the steering committee, there was a motion, then there was a report from the steering committee, then there was a second report from the steering committee, there was all the debate that ensued from that report, and there was a real obstinacy, to not accepting amendments, to not entertaining all parties opening their books. I'm saying their obstinacy in proceeding with this issue of election financing actually delayed the study of Bill C-6.

So I would have to say yes, the opposition MPs delayed the study of Bill C-6 by trying to force an election financing study that actually we were quite happy to accommodate if we'd open all the books of all the parties. Our position on that is that when all the books are open, everybody, Canadians included, will see that all parties have acted in the same manner, in a legal manner, and in accordance with election financing laws, and that there is no study to be done. That's the key thing. That's why by proceeding that way we would not have actually spent a lot of time doing a study, because the matter would have been rectified rather quickly.

But there's an obstinacy on behalf of the opposition to accept the suggestion—I call it the friendly amendment—to open all books. There's nothing to hide here. We're not criticizing the opposition for their election financing. I'm clarifying why they're—

[An hon. member]

On a point of clarification—

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, you asked for a point of clarification, and what I'm trying to clarify is the fact that I'm saying yes, the opposition MPs delayed the study of Bill C-6, and the reason they did it was for the partisan purposes of launching a study on election financing that actually could have been implemented and completed in a very effective and efficient manner, provided they had accepted our friendly amendment to open all books of all parties. My point was that when we open all the books of all the parties, Canadians will see that all parties have acted in the same manner, that they've done exactly the same thing, and that it is legal.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

On a point of order, does that have something to do with Bill C-6?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

In fact, the member is working on clarifying a request for a point of clarification by Monsieur Proulx. Thank you, though.

Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You know, Chair, I wouldn't be here discussing this if Mr. Proulx had not sought the clarification in the first place. Now that the clarification is required, I want to make sure I address his concern, because if another MP—

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'm sorry to have to report that the clarification has not been very complete, because I'm still hooked on the fact that the government is filibustering, not us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Excuse me, Mr. Proulx.

A member cannot do indirectly what they're not allowed to do directly, which is to interrupt the debate order. I'm happy to put your name on the list if you want to get into the debate, but I won't have points of order or points of clarification used to jump inside the debate.

Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you. It's a good call.

I will try to simply finish my clarification, because I keep losing my thoughts when he interrupts like that.

[An hon. member]

Can you start over?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

The point I'm trying to make is that if we opened up all the books of all the parties, we could have dispensed with this study of election financing. I think that would have been to Ms. Redman's goal. She wants to have a study of election financing, so let's do it and let's get it over with quickly; and by doing so, let's open up all the books, because as soon as we open all the books of every party, Canadians will see there's nothing there. That would take probably less than one meeting. We could then move on with other important business.

So I do want to answer the question directly that was asked of me. I am indeed saying that the opposition has delayed committee business—and I'm talking about committee business being Bill C-6 and the study of other legislation—with this sort of partisan initiative to look at the books of only one party. It just makes no sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Is there a possibility that we can conclude that we're clear on that point? Are you okay now?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Well, I've always been okay. I've always been clear with myself. The question is whether my colleague is clear, because he indicated he was not clear.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

He's indicating that he's clear on this point. So let's move....Thank you, I understood it. I'm sure the member opposite is very clear now. Let's move back.

Thank you.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I am so glad. It worries me when my fellow MPs are not clear. That's right. He did understand. It did sink in. That's great, so it's in there. It's been logged in his memory bank.

I was talking about the Muslim Canadian Congress, Chair, and what their viewpoint was on this, and that very important statement they made that it is not a requirement of Islam that Muslim women stay covered. They would be more than willing to lift their veils if that is the requirement. So I was just in the process of underscoring what I consider to be a fairly significant statement by the Muslim Canadian Congress.

They went on, of course, to say:

My question is, how are you going to ensure that the same veiled person is not going to vote a multiple number of times using different identifications? Unless identification can be connected to the person voting, it is useless. So if there isn't legislation in place at the moment for voters to identify themselves visually, there should be, and that's what I'm proposing here.

Again, the president of the Muslim Canadian Congress is very eloquent here in that the president is raising a very valid concern. I think this is the concern that prompted the change in the law in the first place, and that is this whole idea of the identification of the voter. As we know, votes are crucial. We have some MPs who won by a handful of votes. The opposition has some MPs who won by a handful of votes. Every vote counts.

I think, in a sense, Chair, this is something that is taken for granted at times. When an MP wins by 10,000 votes or 20,000 votes, one can see how it can be taken for granted. Oh, it's just a handful of votes; okay, so it's not 12,000, it's 12,000 less a handful. But there are several MPs who won by a handful of votes or to whom a handful of votes would have made a significant difference.

I can certainly speak to that myself. In my riding it was a huge change. It moved from a Liberal MP to a Conservative MP. For your edification--I know you'll be interested in this--in part of the riding it had been 124 years. I'm talking 1882 since the last time a Conservative MP had been elected. When I was elected on election night, it actually unfolded in an interesting way. There are parts of the riding that are very strong in one way and others that are very strong in the other way. So as the results were coming in, it really depended on which parts of the riding were reporting in during the evening. Of course, no one really had visibility on that. All we saw were the overall results showing up on the screen. I started the evening in advance, but then the Liberal candidate took the lead and he held the lead for a good portion of the evening. In fact, some media outlets declared him the winner, so they put the check mark beside his name because he had been ahead for an hour by roughly 1,000 votes.

What's interesting is that at the end of the evening, the remaining polling stations reported in and I started to eat into that lead, much to the delight of those who voted in favour of me, and actually narrowed that gap. Here's where it gets interesting, Chair. At the very end of the evening, and I think mine was one of the last ridings to know definitively who the winner was, I had surged ahead. I won by an avalanche of 200 votes. In my riding 200 votes works out to roughly one vote per ballot box.

Now where does this fit into what I'm talking about today? What I'm talking about today and what the Muslim Canadian Congress brought up was, how are you going to ensure that the same veiled person is not going to vote a multiple number of times using different identifications? We're talking about the integrity of the voting process. I'm saying that certainly I am very sensitive, as I think other MPs would be, especially those who win by a smaller margin, to the integrity of the voting process and this ability to be able to identify voters.

Up until the passage into law regarding identification of voters, it was possible to vote just with your card. You could just say, “Hi, I have this card, and I'm voting”, and you were not obligated to prove that you were who you were. Of course, when you're looking at a 200-vote spread, if things don't go in accordance with the way they are supposed to, this can cause great concern.

I think her concern is valid in that we're talking one vote per ballot box. What if veiled voters went to other boxes to vote and could not be properly identified because of the misunderstanding that now exists in the electoral process? It's a very valid question, because the point I'm trying to make, Chair, is that one vote per ballot box can make the difference. There are other MPs who won by smaller margins than mine, and I would say that their concern would even be more intense regarding this process. So the president of the Muslim Canadian Congress quite rightly said, “So if there isn't legislation in place at the moment for voters to identify themselves visually, there should be...”.

She said this back in September, yet here we are, we're sitting here in February, and basically the bill is stalled. Bill C-6, our solution to this problem, is stalled here in the committee, when in fact I think it could have been dealt with in a very efficacious manner. All we need is a bit of cooperation--